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Old House My House

Life in front of the camera and behind the scenes at a This Old House renovation.

We had long felt that our house was missing something in the front. It had many lovely details, but the front porch was a bit bare. So we asked our architect, David Whitney, to work up some options for a railing (or balustrade). Here are the four options he came back with.

Personally I liked the way the Geometric scheme picked up the angles of the house, but I was overruled. We went with the flat stock profiles, and handed the design over to Tom and Norm to take a crack at making them on site.

One of the goals of the renovation was to create a more open feel to the home while preserving the character and charm of the period. A large part of this vision included removing the drop ceilings that were added to the first floor many years ago. We were really excited (and slightly worried) about what we would find. Tom Silva cut away a piece of the dining room ceiling so that we could get a sneak preview of our 141 year old ceiling. This beautiful discovery exceeded our expectations.

In most ways we were a pretty typical family. We had our routine: got up in the morning, got the kids to school, went to work, ate dinner, repeat. Normal stuff.

Then our home was selected as a project for This Old House. And just like that - poof - the routine was gone.

As a service for you, reader, I've put together this list. If you notice the following things happening to you, you too may be on a home improvement show.

#1: There are cameras everywhere

One day I came home from work and found this in my living room:

I knew going into this there were going to be webcams, but I had no idea each one was going to be 6 feet tall, make noise and scare the heck out of me every time I walked into the room. Not shown are the ones in the front and back yards, or the one parked outside our bathroom.

#2: Very intense people are telling you what to do. And you do it.

The first filming day was an eye opener. I'll start by saying the crew is incredibly nice and professional. The folks behind the camera have the same level of expertise in their fields as Tom, Roger, Kevin and Norm.

But once it comes time to shoot an episode, they are all business. Here's what it looks like when Tom Draught, the director, tells you what to do during a shot.

See the intensity in his eyes? Clearly this is not a man to ignore.

#3: Funny things are happening all around you.

Here's a picure of TOH series producer Deb Hood showing Tom Silva how to use Twitter. Yes, pigs are now flying. You can follow him here.

#4: You see this thing parked in front of your house

I'm sure we'll get back to our routine once the project is over. But for now we're enjoying the ride!

(Picture: Rita Gurry in front of her demolished home. As of today it is rebuilt thanks to Rita's determination.)

You never know how someone is going to react when
they lose everything, but an educated guess suggests that most would find the
experience traumatic. But people surprise you, like Rita Gurry did. Rita is one
of three homeowners we are working with on the Jersey Shore, and I’ve written
about her before (see my earlier post below). After Super Storm Sandy hit the
Jersey coast her house was a total loss; we took it down with an excavator this
past April.

(Picture: Nick Spino on the rebuilt steps of his house, which was underwater the night Sandy hit.)

Our
director, Thom, stepped out of the car with a sort of stunned look in his eyes.
“What’s up?” I asked, expecting to hear about his day scouting and about yet
another devastated community on the Jersey Shore. But that wasn’t it. “I just met this guy Nick,” he said shaking
his head in disbelief, and then he told me Nick’s story. Then I heard the story
from Nick himself, not once or twice but maybe a dozen times, because now we
were recording it on camera and because it’s that kind of story.

(Picture: The kayak Carlos hauled up to his second floor and eventually used to paddle away from his flooded house.)

When Superstorm Sandy barreled down on the town of Point
Pleasant you could say that Carlos and Maria Santos went their separate ways. Maria
left, taking the kids to the temporary shelter setup at the nearby school.
Carlos stayed, to keep an eye on things and to man the three pumps he set up
under the house.

(Picture: Jackie Rebolz and her children watch as her parents' home of thirty years is demolished and removed from the bay.)

Natural disasters like Sandy cause some strange situations,
and I saw plenty of them when I got to the Jersey Shore. There was the broken
house sitting on top of a two-ton army truck, and there was the 100-foot-high roller
coaster sitting in the ocean so perfectly intact it looked like a dozen
screaming teenagers had just given it a ride.

As long as kids have gone to the
beach they’ve built sand castles, and I suspect they always will. And for every
sand castle built most eventually end up with a wall of sand in front of them.
The tide always rises and every kid, seeing his prized creation threatened by
the oncoming waves, thinks the same thing: “Build a wall!”

In Bay Head, N.J. that simple
childhood instinct is alive and well, post-superstorm Sandy. A group of about
20 beachfront homeowners are, on their own nickel, building a “revetment wall.”
It will sit on the beach between the ocean and their homes, a big bit of
industry that starts with digging down about 20 feet, then filling the hole
with 6,000 pound stones trucked in from nearby quarries. Those massive stones
are then covered with more sand. The idea is to break the wave action kicked up
by a storm and provide a last line of defense with a barrier that, the
homeowners hope, won’t wash away.

When we first thought about adding a second floor above our office, we figured we'd be in store for some conversations about the foundation. The office was housed in a small addition at the back of the house that - we think - started off as a screened-in porch.

Our hunch prooved right. When Tom and the crew started poking around under the office it didn't take long for them to conclude that it was merely a pile of rubble under our house. It wasn't really doing much to hold the structure up. Here's a picture of Tommy drawing a picture of how slanted the back part of our house had become over the years.

The photo also shows the LVL they bolted to the structure to make it level.

So they quickly decided we needed to add a proper foundation if we wanted to add on a second level. That meant digging down four feet to get below the frost line. Because of the number of boulders on our site and the location where they needed to dig, excavation needed to be done by hand. That's a a lot of work. Two days later this is what it looked like:

They poured a new concrete footing, then built the walls out of block. Amazingly, most of this happened during one of the rainiest weeks of the year. Our son came by to inspect their work.

Inside they put a rat slab.

The finished foundation looks good. The back room, which will now be part of the kitchen, is level and solid. And best if all, it's ready for the second story soon to be built above it.

(Picture: The storm devastated Seaside Heights, its boardwalk, which is the lifeblood of the business community, and the amusement park that attracts tens of thousands of tourists every summer.)

“We’re going to rebuild our home.” It’s a refrain I hear as I move around
the storm-damaged neighborhoods of the Jersey Shore. People are determined to
rebuild their homes and it’s an understandable sentiment. Well... I thought I understood it. As it turns out some people are talking about their
houses (I know three of them very well) but many others are talking about their
home, that is to say their township or their neighborhood. Both “homes” are
important. A roof over your head is critical, but so is a school for your kids,
a church for your soul and a grocery store for your survival. And on the Jersey
shore both “homes” need rebuilding.

(Picture: My all-time favorite picture, which I took during an incredible day at the Lincoln Memorial. This is an impossible shot to get unless you are up on scaffolding right next to this amazing memorial.)

Normally on This Old House we
have great access to experts and unique locations. Telling folks you work with
the show is usually a golden ticket that can get you behind the scenes of some
spectacular places. I’ll never forget
when I was at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, for example, and a Park
Service employee invited me up the statue of Abraham Lincoln onto some
scaffolding placed there for a once in a lifetime repair. Fewer than 100
people, I was told, had ever seen the sculpture this close, and when I laid
eyes on the tiny caliper marks made by Daniel Chester French during the
statue’s construction, I was literally awestruck.

In an earlier post we showed some pictures of the surprise staircase we found behind a wall. Sadly, there wasn't a spot for it in our new plans, so it had to go. Here's a quick video of Tom and Kevin taking it down.

(Picture: An annual dose of old christmas trees kept the dune grass healthy and thick, protecting the beach and house behind it.)

On parts of the Jersey
Shore, people actually own
the beach. Neighborhood associations can sell badges to visitors, limit parking
near the beach, and even ask people to get off their sand if the person is
above the mean high tide line.